ABSTRACT
The small parchment certificate reproduced in Figure
9.1 is one of the most remarkable documents in world
history. It was signed in Geneva at the World Health
Organization on the 9th of December 1979 by the 20
members of the Global Commission for the
Certification of Smallpox Eradication. It warrants the
global eradication of a disease which for more than
three thousand years had been a major scourge of
mankind. For, despite intensive surveillance, no cases
of endemic smallpox had been detected anywhere in
the world since the last case in Somalia in October
1977. Apart from a laboratory accident, that freedom
from smallpox has remained intact and, unless
despoiled through some act of biological warfare, is
likely to remain so for humanity’s future.
